Q: Al, I understand that you are an 'old' teacher. I am not sure which is more significant, that we were both teachers, or that we both left teaching?

Jim, good question. I've seen many ex-teachers in a variety of positions and usually doing fairly well. My thought in college was that I wanted to be a teacher, but later found that I wanted more to also work with computers. The teaching degree gave me a good general education that included a discipline, psychology, and how to communicate effectively. I found that I was balancing two jobs, Math teacher and computer programmer for the school. Between myself and a friend that I had meet in college, we programmed a track scheduling system, forensics tournament manager, and computer aided instruction on a Hewlett-Packard 2000 timeshare computer that provide about 10kb of memory to each user.

Q: What caused you to leave teaching and enter the world of computing?

I was married with 2 children and found myself working part-time to make ends meet. Then I realized that the part time work was bringing in more money than teaching, so I decided to move on. One of my uncles, a minister, was not happy that I was leaving teaching and working with machines. He thought that I should continue to work with people. I agreed with him, but explained that I would continue to work with people to get machines to help people be able to concentrate on what people should be doing. I think the jury is still out on where we are making life better.

Q: I see you worked with Burroughs, one of the oldest names in early mainframe computers.

I went to Milwaukee and interviewed with all of the computer companies that had offices there and found a Burroughs office that had another former teacher who was finding success with small businesses, so they hired me. I was a software sales support person handling mostly presales but also ongoing support for additional sales. The office handled mostly small to medium-sized businesses with the B80/800 and B90/900 series of computers. Burroughs was a leading software provider with programming tools that were the front runners of user-based development languages.

Q: Then onto the company that produced the huge cult classic Dungeons and Dragons. How did you end up there?

TSR was a client of Burroughs that I was assigned to because they were using the Burroughs's tools better than most Burroughs clients and no one else wanted to talk to them. I provided software support at first and then added hardware sales and support as TSR started its growth spurt. One of the owners was trying to balance computer management with the overall management of the company and it grew to be too much for one person. So he gave me an offer I couldn't refuse.

Q: What did you do for TSR, Inc.?

At TSR, I became the Vice President of Computers and directed the development of all the back office and accounting systems that the company needed. As a publishing company, word processing was very important, but since this is prior the PC/MAC, we did the work on a HP3000 mini computer with a line editor word processor. The Burroughs gear was proving to be unreliable, but the HP3000 gear was rock solid.

I bought standard accounting software including order entry and manufacturing control. We developed a mail order and mailing list system in Powerhouse from Cognos. One of the more fun systems was designing a system for the Pick a Path Adventure books. It involved a writer developing a story with choices that the reader could make as they read. The writers were manually moving the pages around to scramble the book, but it was taking up to a week to make it satisfactory. I worked to have them embed codes into the text and developed a computer system to do that work. The time to scramble the books dropped to less than a day.

When I arrived I found out how much help they really needed. The Egbert case was just breaking and TSR was getting more national press than anyone could buy. It was a tragic story of a young man that was 15 years old and already in college. He was a genius and had moved rapidly through school at Michigan State. When he was reported missing, the police found D&D materials on his desk in his dorm room and didn't know what to make of it. So they contacted TSR for help, the press grabbed it and thought it was a cult thing. The kid turned up in Texas at a relative's house. He was scared and over his head in handling the non academic part of college. Unfortunately, he ended his life months later.

The publicity pushed TSR and Dungeons & Dragons into a vast unpaid advertising splurge. Sales numbers literally moved by changing the decimal point. The Burroughs system and staff got over loaded and billing got 6 months behind. Most companies would have closed the doors with that kind of cash flow crisis. Not these guys. They just hired someone to fix it (me) and we were back on track in just a few weeks. It was an amazing time. The spurt of advertising had more to do with the success than the product itself. Proportionally it was much bigger than the New Coke backlash a couple of years later. Both cases illustrate the power of the media and advertising. And that the most effective advertising is not always paid for.

Q: I have to ask, Al, during the hey day of the Dungeons and Dragons craze, many were convinced that this game was really a cover for sinister and evil powers seeking to infiltrate the minds of youth.? Did you discuss this perception during your 'coven' meetings ??

I actually found that most kids that play D & D improve their attitudes and school work by making learning fun. The game was, at that time, and still is mostly non electronic. It requires a lot of reading, writing, math, and imagination. Discussions certainly occurred and some actions were done to help form good public perception, but I mostly found a typical small business growing rapidly. The normal problems of employees, nepotism, internal feuds, politics, and egos all lead to an exciting work place. I was the first person hired that had training in the actual job to be done. Most were gamers/friends/relatives that were willing to risk employment with a small firm. I looked at it as a great place to expand my computer knowledge with a company that had the cash to fund it. I had no particular interest in the game itself. I've watched it being played, help organize and computerize the major convention that they own, but didn't follow into the gaming world as a player.

I was more of the reserved type that would put together an employee tailgate lunch to celebrate the opening of spring training. We'd get a couple grills and gather together for a little fun at lunch. It was a close-knit group that was really more worried about the normal things in life and business than any type of cult.

Q: You are now an independent consultant, correct?

After 10 years at TSR and an ownership change, I found that it was time to leave. I had worked with the HP and Cognos user groups and found a demand for the skills that I had learned over the years. With a change in the company vacation policy, I found I had 15 weeks of vacation to use or lose. It was too much time off and I found some work that paid more than I had made at TSR that year, so it all fell together nicely. I have worked with a variety of companies providing design, programming, and training. In addition, we now offer web sites, documentation, and photography.

Q: Photography? Tell us how that fits into IT consulting?

As part of the web site development we can do the photography and imaging that is needed for the site. We have also coordinated the printed materials that a client needs for non web site imagery. As a graphic artist I make a good third base coach, so I have a photographer/graphic artist that does that work. That makes it look good. To make it work well, as a former teacher, I recognize the importance of training and documentation. We provide our clients with complete documentation, including how the system will support their policies and procedures, windows on line help and end user training. We also provide ongoing support. A system works well only when the people who use it are properly trained. I've found that partnering together people that have the appropriate skill sets can result in a great end product.

Q: I see that the name of your company is: Bookwood Systems Ltd. Can you tell us where this name comes from?

Buchholz in german translates to bookwood, a tree that is a type of large dark oak. Seemed to be a good thing to base a company name on.

Q: What would be the average size company that you consult for?

Probably a good way to look at it is the range of customers that I've worked with. One of my first clients was a division of Kodak. Each Kodak division could be it's own fortune 50 company. The work I did was focused on an individual department, so it was like working for a small company. Others have included parts of the Canadian government, large manufacturers, healthcare providers, and insurance companies. Some of these clients use Alpha products and don't even know it. Most of the Alpha clients are smaller firms with up to 30 or 40 employees. Many clients have 1 or 2 employees and are just getting started with computers. It is enjoyable to work with a wide variety of clients and note their similarities and differences. The bottom line is that the solutions that large businesses have are now also available to small businesses.

Q: When did you first begin using Alpha Software's database products?

I don't remember exactly when I found Alpha. One of the first demands I had for it was when I needed a skiing boat and a local marine dealer needed a mailing list program. The HP/Cognos solution was overkill, so I looked for a PC based solution. As I recall, the product worked within 640kb and did just enough to make it work for the dealer. It had to be in the mid to late 1980's, because I bought a second boat in 1991 from the same dealer. Surprisingly, he needed an upgrade at the time. He's still an Alpha user and has a nice system that takes the data entry for customers and maintains much of the information for those customers. It also selects the chosen neighborhoods from the county provided tax rolls and picks 8,000 names out of 35,000 for selected mailings.

Q: How do you use Alpha Five?

Besides the marine dealer, I needed internal systems for my business. So I developed a client information and billing system. As the business grew, I found that more was needed and moved to QuickBooks for the standard accounting needs. I still use an Alpha system that tracks the baseball season tickets that I own and share with a group of people. I also use it with the local high school athletic booster club to run an annual auction that includes 250 silent items and 50-75 live items. It tracks the people and donators, prepares the paperwork for the auction, and records the sales for invoices the night of the auction. It's a fast-paced night, but Alpha holds up well and we raise $15 -25,000 in about 6 hours.

The knowledge that I've gained from the internal development has helped me to use it for clients to develop a medical scheduling and back office system, fund raising tracking, bailbonds, plastic recyclers, golf club rentals, and custom add-ons for packages. I've also used it in larger projects for data conversions and cleansing when clients have moved from a legacy system to Oracle or SAP.

I really like to use the Alpha high-level language as much as possible and use xbasic as I need to, but I believe in the philosophy of little or no programming to get a system running. I find many of the features in Alpha that are lacking in other languages for building operational systems. I do use some other tools to provide informational parts of systems like: drill down, OLAP, and graphic displays. I think as a systems integrator, the software packages are the tools in the toolbox and each need to be used for the job that they do.

Q: Al, the large enterprises have lots of resources to throw at their internal software requirements, much of it wasted in my opinion. Medium sized businesses down to mom and pop stores are underserved.

It's basic return on investment. The large businesses have more to gain, more to spend, and are usually more experienced with technology. Development of technology is an expensive learning process. Those ideas that look good on paper don't always make it in reality - like a film editor's cutting room floor that is littered with most of the day's shooting.

The small business may be moving from a paper system and just getting into technology. Some are more ahead of the curve. The advantage that the small business has is the vast number of businesses that exist. The level of sophistication and need is nearly as high as large businesses. The testing, implementation, and education needs are still high for the small business user. Providing support for the small business user at an affordable price is the challenge.

Q: We are on the cusp of a general release of the Alpha Five version 6 beta. The two main talking points are client/server and the web application server. Tell me what you think this means to the Alpha Community.

The client server model adds a more stable data platform than file server systems. It also adds clients that need departmental systems that need to interact with large database systems.

The web server adds the next big platform for business, i.e. real business data over the web for small businesses. We've gone through the cycle of using the web for entertainment. Now we can use it for intercommunication.

The community as a whole will change as the experience of the users expands to the new markets that will open up. The expectations of the tools will rise to the competition that this market has. And the tools will need to rise to that level to succeed. We need to gain more productivity without loss of the key components that the competition has. It's not always the quality tools that win, but the ones that are most accepted.

The community may lose some of it's down home friendly atmosphere. While Alpha Five is in a competitive market now, the next market is on steroids. We can each contribute what we can to keep it good place for healthy communication. The message board has been a tremendous help and needs to stay focused on helping each other in a friendly and professional manner. While we need open and honest talk, it should be confined to the task at hand and not an open discussion of politics, religion, or other off topic subjects. I've seen other message boards degrade to that and ultimately lose the ability to help users. The 'moderators' of the board have done a good job keeping it focused so far.

Q: You mentioned earlier that you are developing web sites. How do you see the new Alpha Five version 6 Web Application Server fitting into your web development work?

I'm banking on it to provide some solutions for me and my clients to use the web for business. The simple data interface of Alpha should provide an easy way to collect and distribute information through a web page. The dot com flurry was the initial fluff push of the internet. The real push will be the productive use of the internet and will be a more quiet event. Easy to use tools will make us wonder what we did without them.

Q: Al, you have worked internally, and as a consultant, with both large and small businesses. I will make an observation that in the past Alpha's target market was the savvy end user, and the independent developer/consultant that worked primarily with small businesses. With version 6 and Alpha's Web Application Server on the horizon, what do you see as Alpha's market 'sweet spot'?

I think this adds Alpha Five to the approved list of many IT departments opening more of the departmental business within larger companies. It also greatly increases the attractiveness of Alpha Five for more complex standalone systems. Which one will be the sweetest spot is hard to tell. The ability to work with databases beyond dbase is the first step. A straightforward web presence is also fundamental, with the last piece being product support for developers that is beyond the current message board system and calls to Alpha. It may be Alpha Software, Inc. directly, a partnership system similar to the Guild, or third parties providing it directly to the clients. Education needs will expand for those who can teach others how to use Alpha Five.

For current users, version 6 will add functionality and more expansion possibilities, while keeping the current ease of use.

Q: Al, you are involved with the Alpha Guild. What do you see as the benefits of the guild?

This is a service that provides assistance to Alpha 5 trial users when they need it the most - at the initial stage of using the product. For customers, it can fill the gap on the important first questions about how the software works and the crucial first steps in expectations of the product. For Alpha, it spreads the workload off the development and support staff increasing the time to work directly on product improvements, yet fulfilling the needs of the trial users. For Guild members, it provides an invaluable source of leads for new clients while providing a service that helps expand the overall Alpha user base.

It is a relatively unique experience for the trial user. Most companies don't provide this level of customer service to the trial user. A frequent comment from users is the joy and surprise of being contacted. Quotes from clients include: "This says a lot about the company's commitment to its customers." "The product and customer service level has impressed me and helped me to buy the product."

Q: Do you do anything outside of working with computers?

On the rare occasion that there isn't a computer problem to work on, I keep after my 6 children, 3 from my first marriage and my wife's 3 from her first. That kept us busy going to soccer, baseball, swimming, basketball, gymnastics, track, and tennis events through their high school years. All are now done with undergraduate work and have moved into the job market or graduate school. We have a large variety of interests - photography, web pages, sales, advertising, social work, and teachers.

The grandchildren have started and I've found that to be the best time yet. The first is now 2 1/2 and the second should be here in April. We've joked that 12 to 15 might be probable, so I'd better like grandkids.

My wife is a middle school teacher, who also performs as a concert violinist. That takes us to her performances and other musical and theater productions.

I do like to golf, ski, fish, and hunt. One of my son-in-laws got me interested in single action cowboy shooting. It's an activity that includes dressing up in period clothing and shooting at targets with tools of the trade from the post Civil War to 1890's era. It's a way to step back into history and have fun. I've always been interested in history. In fact my 5th and 6th grade teacher thought that I'd be an historian. I think it helps to keep a perspective on life and shows what a remarkable time that we live in. We'd all like to know the future. One of my favorite sayings is: "We don't know where we are going unless we know who we are. And we don't know who we are unless we know where we came from."

I've grown fond of spending time in the Cayman Islands, just relaxing and enjoying the warmth. I'm a private pilot, but have put that aside because the time needed to devote to it is taken by other higher priority items. It was fun to fly to a client's site, work with them, and fly home. But with the internet and VNC, I am finding that I never even meet some clients. That's a shame, but is the way of this world. On the other hand, it may allow me to live the life of working on the computer while having my fishing pole out over the pier on a lake in northern Wisconsin, or being on the beach in the Cayman Islands, while the gentle waves roll in. So many choices, so little time.

Alan Buchholz is a systems integrator that provides real technology solutions for real people.
You can visit Al's web site at www.bookwood.com, or contact him directly at alb@bookwood.com